In Israel's 'Deal of the Century', No One Wins

As Israelis go to the polls for the second time in six months, writes Alon-Lee Green, will voters believe that incumbent prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bizarre ‘Deal of the Century’ can bring an end to a conflict that has been so costly on all sides?

Picture this: a wedding ceremony in a beautiful setting, complete with waiting photographers, an attentive audience, and a charismatic priest (or, ok, we could make it a rabbi)… but with just one person in front of the altar. Would you call that a wedding? No? Then you can’t call Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Deal of the Century” a peace plan.

Nevertheless, this is exactly the kind of ceremony that took place in late January on the South Lawn of the White House. US President Trump, the priest, stood there with the groom, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Both wore their best outfits and their widest smiles, and declared that they had brought the world an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan at last. Sounds great, doesn’t it? For the first time in a decade, the Prime Minister of Israel, a man who generally avoids even mentioning the word “peace”, finally declared his willingness to sign a peace treaty with the Palestinians, after more than 50 years of occupation. Unfortunately, there was only one thing missing: the bride. Yes, I mean the Palestinians.

How ridiculous is it to announce a peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians without having the Palestinians present? And when we look at the guests at the Deal of the Century-that-wasn’t, the picture gets stranger still. Of the delegations making up the audience for that celebratory moment in Washington, there were evangelical Christians on Trump’s side and the Yesha Council on Netanyahu’s.

The Yesha Council (Mo'etzet Yesha in Hebrew, or the council of Judea, Samaria and Gaza), is the umbrella organisation for all Israeli-Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The “coalition of evangelicals”, one of Trump’s strongest bases of support, play a key role in influencing US foreign policy over Israel and Palestine. Not only do Evangelical churches contribute millions of dollars every year to Israel’s settlements project, but they also claim scriptural authority for their view that the entire land of Palestine/Israel should be in Israel’s possession. “The Bible talks about the land that the Jewish people are living on, the land which the Jew haters call ‘settlements’ and ‘illegal’”, proclaimed Dr Mike Evans, the founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, a member of the Trump Faith Initiative and a guest at this event. “Israel just got kissed by God,” he added.

So when this so-called peace deal was solemnised, why was the US administration in the room, and the Israeli government in the room, and the settlers’ leaders, and even the settlers’ best friends in the US, the evangelical Christians – but the Palestinians, the ones who the people in the room were talking about, weren’t allowed in?

It is here we see the real aim of this Deal of the Century. It wasn’t peace that was being celebrated at this lopsided wedding, but the refusal of the Palestinians to agree to this deal – because it was created to be one that the Palestinians could never accept. In a cruel demonstration of cynicism, what Trump and Netanyahu did on the South Lawn while they were talking about “peace”, was celebrating triumph over the Palestinians, attempting to end their hope of freedom once and for all.

Trump and Netanyahu both know this plan will never come to life. No Palestinian could accept the annexation to Israel of all Israeli settlements – which were illegally built on Palestinian lands, in case you need a reminder. Nor will Palestinians abandon their capital of East Jerusalem, as the Trump/Netanyaho plan blithely announces will occur. And of course Palestinians could not accept the further shrinking of their state – currently the world’s 7th most densely populated – by agreeing to let Israel annex a further 30% of their territory. That’s the whole point of this plan: pushing the Palestinians away from the table, putting them in a corner, and forcing them to refuse the “peace”.

I am an Israeli citizen. A proud one. I want what’s best for my country, for my people. But I know this plan of Trump and Netanyahu isn’t a plan made for me or my friends or my family. It is not a deal that could ever serve the people of Israel, as our media glibly promises us, or its economy, or its security. In my country, every fifth family lives below the poverty line. Israel has the highest poverty rates of any OECD country. Every third Israeli child is living in poverty, and poverty among elderly citizens is rising every year. But despite the harsh reality of life in the Promised Land, our government is in no hurry to tackle Israel’s social problems. For Netanyahu, it is far more important to fund settlements, or spend $1.7 billion to buy new F35 jets from the US. This is the true price of the Occupation, and it is a bill that Israeli society must pay over and over again. Continuing the conflict comes at the cost of solving our real problem: inequality. And this is why Trump is not Israel’s friend, or at least not of the people of Israel.

A real friend would never let you be so drunk with power that you overdose and die. A real friend would understand that Israel’s interests – my interests – and the Palestinians’ interests are the same. We both want to live in peace, in quiet, in security. We all want our taxes spent on schools, health, housing, the environment, and on our future, and not on jets, walls and more funerals. Going through this heartbreaking charade of a so-called Deal of the Century, just to take us back to square one when more blood has been spilled and yet more lives lost, will bring us no peace. Only ending the Occupation will.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.